Word Is Seeking Poetry, Prose, Poetics, Criticism, Reviews, and Visuals for Upcoming Issues
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Word For/ Word is seeking poetry, prose, poetics, criticism, reviews, and visuals for upcoming issues. We read submissions year-round, but issue #31 is scheduled for March 2018. Please direct queries and submissions to: Word For/ Word c/o Jonathan Minton 546 Center Avenue Weston, WV 26452 Submissions should be a reasonable length (i.e., 3 to 6 poems, or prose between 50 and 2000 words) and include a biographical note and publication history (or at least a friendly introduction), plus an SASE with appropriate postage for a reply. A brief statement regarding the process, praxis or parole of the submitted work is encouraged, but not required. Please allow one to three months for a response. We will consider simultaneous submissions, but please let us know if any portion of it is accepted elsewhere. We do not consider previously published work. Email queries and submissions may be sent to: [email protected]. Email submissions should be attached as a single .doc, .rtf, .pdf or .txt file. Visuals should be attached individually as .jpg, .png, .gif, or .bmp files. Please include the word "submission" in the subject line of your email. Word For/ Word acquires exclusive first-time printing rights (online or otherwise) for all published works, which are also archived online and may be featured in special print editions of Word For/Word. All rights revert to the authors after publication in Word For/ Word; however, we ask that we be acknowledged if the work is republished elsewhere. Word For/ Word is open to all types of poetry, prose and visual art, but prefers innovative and post-avant work with an astute awareness of the materials, rhythms, trajectories and emerging forms of the contemporary. Word For/ Word is published biannually. Jonathan Minton, Editor ISSN 2159-8061 Logo Design by Dolton Richard www.wordforword.info WF/W: Issue 30 (2017 September) Table of Contents Poetry / Evan Gray Janis Butler Holm Anne Gorrick Lana Bella D. E. Steward Arkava Das Mark Dow Robyn Art Jeff Harrison Leslie Seldin Mark Young Arpine Konyalian Grenier Raymond Farr Raphael P. Maurice Darren Demaree Visual Poetry / Michael Basinski and Ginny O'Brien Matthew Klane and Justin Edward Moore Scott Helmes Barbora and Tomas Pridal Rebecca Eddy Jim Andrews Dan Dorman Sacha Archer J.I. Kleinberg Danika Stegeman LeMay Special Feature / Translations from the French by Sabine Buchet Review / Rich Murphy on W. Scott Howard Evan Gray from THICKETS SWAMPED IN FENCE COATED BRIARS high grove tree-line dancing figures hallelujah translated in rain showers wind tattered jazz curdled milk in the fridge honeybees living in bird’s nest moon again lonesome bleak tractor bucket bellied up 12-gauge shell littered land horizon lines outshine the flood light art thou or aren’t thou fiddle tunes lichen on brick facing hedge grass fingernails blooded tooth aching that old hymn you remember Evan Gray Where the Willow Hangs Down barbed wire fence empty visions city folks wind chimes conversation translated AM radio static just behind the timberline just behind the shadows of a shed town is reflected jade green moss north side of a tree a foot from planted daffodils Evan Gray Slang a thorn bush behind hog pins high strung in starkness the right pair of boots & the holler’s backdoor coves my flannel shirt pockets cover the beehives 1965 half-dollar dad gave me, buy gas, take a mouthful of snuff hide in the house when J comes over drunk scrabble in the porch light, in the perch, window stains I leave the doors locked remember, the mountains, ridges BBQ chip bags, fishing off the bridge, origins just pure like lady liberty, a shoebox, hand-me-down sweaters and cattails tall as people a six pack by the bookshelf, take to the cold alter, now a in fenced-in field, with my self-portrait for backdrops, blackberries along the parkway rough work with words and taxidermy plastered lynx fur or mason jars filled with kerosene, postcards in furnaces black smoke it’s the road, silver pine riddles along burger king boxes, maybe a blacksnake, there, six goats and four hens that were bought cheap even the tiniest crumpling diabetes toes in unison dancing, hammering seven nails in a row whisker closet to each other, vertebras knuckling, damn this liver, lonesome failures to lift the tractor bucket as sacrifice, for now God is a stuck hog or a lamb or another blacksnake, feeding on the mice out, the barn, most of all bottom feeders, bent stakes and glass shards flatpicking breaks, a melody, a rebirth, a cesspool, no new eyes to feel with rain-puddle clouded ecosystems just white chalky connections or dust on my dashboard, readiness it takes certain ancient eyes to call things, specific before the corn comes, upward there will be grass where home is infected by sky-red vapors, gravel throated enigmas, bless my heartstrings for feeling, lantern light wooded has become rust suspended in air like cardboard cutouts, the once seen mountains, jaspering left and right, bone deep, fingernails shards of highway lines on, ordinary thought is underground, paved rivers vibrating, I wanted to say, out the front door to leave, only spaces Evan Gray Basho paths clattered by patterns, alone incomplete by slants of lights I am left standing and shining through, an echo reversing gravity, by falling upward & around I cry for truths or depths floating on the surface, here are skulls, here are heads of deer cut off, I am inland where mountains shimmer and the temperate forest rots. Evan Gray Winter, 2013 toes numb to the earth stomped fibers of my hair tucked in his hat I didn’t even like + this all near the hill where my grandfather is buried but I only knew his cold body lying on a hospital bed while a machine breathes for him, it’s a hospital mom says, a cold metal slab, and I thought we were in the basement, but I don’t remember coughing because of mold which I am allergic to or being scared from the lack of sunlight which used to affect me, but inside I remember looking at my grandfather’s eyelids and eyebrows, how pink and purple + but that’s just it, the deer through my scope, he and I were breathing the same hard syllables just a doe, the last of the season I needed to kill something I needed or I’d wait all year if got another chance and I didn’t do it and throw it on the bed of his pick-up take it to the high school parking lot and show everyone to see what would they think, what they’d say and goddamn I was cold snow was creeping in my tennis shoes not camo but bet everyone else had a deer by now Janis Butler Holm Sound Poems (from Rabelasian Play Station) I The Presidential piston ring transfigures cloven laudanum. The Presidential cottonmouth exposes hirsute whirlygigs. The Presidential flügelhorn discomfits leather godliness. The Presidential riding whip subpoenas buckram epitaphs. The Presidential tuckahoe looks down on seismic barnacles. The Presidential bacon fat complains of wooded pilferage. The Presidential helium makes do with zingy cuttlebones. The Presidential showerhead remodels talking cherryade. II Creeping eruption at ultrahigh frequencies presages mirth. Bare-handed locker rooms gasify elder tricks; protean taxables paint the town red. All things considered, does petty cash bombinate? Judging from aquifers, who has fouled out? Skittish ejection seats jeopardize bladderball, sweetly apprenticing low-lying shrubs. III The Presidential underpass is picketing your dancing shoes. The Presidential circus troupe is rallying your octothorpe. The Presidential parapet is mortgaging your beanbag chair. The Presidential weathercock is curdling your take-home pay. The Presidential chloroform is welcoming your lightning rod. The Presidential teeterboard is honoring your puddle duck. The Presidential firing range is narrowing your superscript. The Presidential dramaturge is summoning your goldenbush. IV Daughterly bivouacs nourish rhinoscopy, flattering toads. Counterintelligence wrestles with waffle mix; uniform density liquidates fluff. Now that alternatives cuddle the great again, whom shall we torture with aureate math? By means of engrossment and color-wheel gum boots, flowering nutmeg abhors politesse. V The Presidential endocarp surmounts a raucous likelihood. The Presidential minus sign procures a gelded watersport. The Presidential currycomb relieves a barking noodle dish. The Presidential kettledrum outranks a churlish overshoe. The Presidential holding cell disowns a fulsome interphase. The Presidential fingerprick employs a cosmic duffle bag. The Presidential jolly boat unveils a squiggly hammerlock. The Presidential vacuum tube assists an orange free-for-all. Anne Gorrick The movie is broken (after worksheet of Lynn Behrendt’s first book titles – as suggested by Google) Of course lions dance, my bright little star You’re still single You can pay me back in gum You can call it love or thunder Her pearls drink milk in the dark Can Calphalon go in the oven? Can call of duty zombies be beat? Fake calla lilies and fake chickens Sleep lyrically wraps spring Her lupus, her Lucky Strikes, her lumineers She is branded by luck Luminarc, landscapes marketed by radiant mystery Luminous fish effect, whiskey park, wheelworks A tiara of molecular substance Which is bigger? Better? An example of Is Kevjumba a heterosexual bear wrestler? Is Banksy Jewish, gay, white, black, pregnant or contagious? Is beer vegan? Is beautiful a curse or a noun? The hard part of Burgundy is beach bum tanning on Stranger TV Burnout lasers: a synonym for skin, a southcloud The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective The odd rubies